There was an article posted on HN a few weeks ago, about Excel's rise over Lotus 1-2-3. Excel was acknowledged as a better software pretty early on, and could

There was an article posted on HN a few weeks ago, about Excel's rise over Lotus 1-2-3. Excel was acknowledged as a better software pretty early on, and could always import Lotus spreadsheets, but it really started gaining adoption once it was able to export to Lotus files. Counter-intuitively, the ability to stay within the Lotus ecosystem (and switch back at any time) is what enabled a lot of people on the fence to try Excel out. Only once Excel became dominant did people actually switch to XLS files.